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Taiwan has made international news lately for its role as the world’s largest supplier of semiconductors, dwarfing its nearest competitor in both volume and quality. Supporting this industry, which relies on extremely precise processes, is a robust machine tool industry that supplies everything from five-axis machining centers to precise grinding machines and EDMs.

Recently, I traveled to the country’s capital Taipei for the Taipei International Machine Tool Show (TIMTOS), co-hosted by the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI) and the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), and I found a machine tool industry that is keeping pace with the latest manufacturing innovations.

Many companies focused on the benefits of digital tools for machining parts. For example, Fair Friend Group (FFG) Sales Director Andy Hung explored the numerous monitoring systems the company uses for its rotary transfer machines. “Our visualizer system has real-time monitoring of machining operations,” Hung says. “In the same program, we have maintenance suggestions. Both are easily understood by the operator, who can easily see when actions need to be taken.” 

Wayne Hsueh, sales director at Victor Taichung Machinery, spoke about the applications of digital twins in manufacturing. “The digital twin sets up a 3D model through servo parameters to simulate the actual cutting conditions of a machine tool to guarantee parts can be machined perfectly as expected and without losses,” Hsueh says. Toolpath simulation using a digital twin not only enables machinists to prevent collisions, but provides them the opportunity to identify ways to improve the machining process and reduce cycle times.

According to Buffalo Machinery General Manager Paul Chang, the benefits of digital technology are many and varied. “Industry 4.0 means you will be able to do much better job training and strategizing,” Chang says.

Additionally, he notes that digital toolsets included with the company’s machines enable shops to monitor energy consumption, both to meet carbon management goals and reduce cost. “We monitor the energy consumption of the machine tool, and this enables us to modify processes to meet carbon goals and reduce energy costs.” These capabilites come standard with many of the company’s machine tools, including the company’s gantry-type five-axis VMCs like the Axile G6.

While these digital tools have widespread utility, one area that saw an especially intense use of digital solutions was the realm of automation.

Automation was obviously one of the more important technologies on display at TIMTOS, but companies emphasized more than just bar feeders and robots. Instead, the focus was on intelligent automation — the use of sensors and other digital tools that enable machine cells to adapt to changing parameters. This approach to automation is designed to provide flexibility to the user.

According to Dah Lih Machinery Sales Manager Ricard Wang, “The premise of smart automation is that mechanical equipment must have intelligent capabilities so that it can have intelligent functions such as fault prediction, precision compensation and automatic parameter setting.” For example, his company’s Tool Breakage Monitor tracks the spindle motor for changes in the current load. When the load is abnormal, it automatically stops machining and sounds an alarm.

This kind of system can help avoid scrapped parts during lights-out machining, in addition to making it easier for one operator to serve multiple machines during their shift.

Yeong-Chin Machinery (YCM) highlighted its multi-pallet system, a pallet pool that enables users to load up to eight different workpieces. “If you put eight different parts on this system,” says YCM Director Jeffery Ervay, “you can run eight different part programs, and you can run them in any order.”

This makes it perfect for automating high-mix, low-volume work. Moreover, these systems connect to machines with monitoring capabilities that enable users to identify problems in-process. WNMG Insert “We can see how long machines are running or identify which parts might potentially be going bad,” says Ervay.

Buffalo Machinery’s Paul Chang further discussed the use of machine tool monitoring in unattended machining. “For example, in an overnight shift, nobody will be at the machines, but you can monitor them from your device to make sure they are still making money for you.” When problems arise, managers can react immediately or prepare the morning shift for disruptions to production. These monitoring features come standard on many Buffalo machines.

At the Taiwan Machine Tool booth, Executive Vice President Clair Chen introduced me to the company’s TLT-200MYW, a multitasking machine capable of milling, drilling, tapping, turning and grinding in a single setup. “With Milling Inserts this machine, you can reduce errors from loading and unloading,” Chen says. The machine comes with monitoring software and tool managements systems that enables managers to keep track of spindle utilization and tool wear, even remotely. “With smart automation, the customer can not only overcome labor shortages, but also create a more efficient production line.”

The image of automation as a single cell devoted to manufacturing a single part year-round has fallen by the wayside as flexible solutions like cobots and pallet pools have made automated machining more accessible to job shops. With digital tools like the ones on display at TIMTOS, automation is even more accessible and more reliable than it has been in the past.

One thing that stood out in my conversations with Taiwanese manufacturers was the fundamental similarity in the needs of Taiwanese and American machine shops. Both are facing harsh personnel crunches that are being addressed through increased automation. Both rely on the defense industry for a great deal of their work. Both produce large numbers of precision parts with tolerances measured in microns.

These similarities mean that the Taiwanese machine tool market fills many of the needs that American manufacturers face: low personnel, complex parts, difficult materials and fragile workpieces are all common in Taiwanese machine shops. With such similar challenges, many U.S. machine tool manufacturers can comfortably look at solutions developed in Taiwan to overcome the challenges they face.

This brings us back to widespread presence of digital tools at the show. For decades, shops have been told that a digital revolution is coming to the machining world. That’s no longer the case — the digital revolution has already arrived, and OEMs around the world are fully embracing digital solutions that have proven reliable in actual manufacturing environments.

Machine monitoring, toolpath simulation, digital twins, tool monitoring — these have all proven their value in many shops and can help the U.S. meet challenges as it expands domestic manufacturing.

The application of machine tool clamping system?is conducive to ensuring the accuracy of workpiece processing and stabilizing product quality, improving labor productivity and reducing costs, improving workers’working conditions and ensuring product safety, expanding the scope of machine tool technology, and realizing “one machine, multi-purpose”.

Characteristics of NC Machiningclamping system

As the clamping system?of machine tool, it is necessary to satisfy the clamping requirement of the workpiece in mechanical processing. At the same time, the clamping system?of NC machining has its own characteristics. These characteristics are:

1.NC machining is suitable for multi-variety, small and medium-sized batch production. In order to clamp multi-variety workpieces of different sizes and shapes, the clamping system?for NC processing should be flexible, and the workpieces of various shapes and sizes can be clamped through appropriate adjustment.

2. The traditional special clamping system?has four functions: positioning, clamping, guiding and toolset. The NC machine tools are usually equipped with a contact test probe, tool setter and tool setting parts, which can solve the problem of tool setting by machine tools. Accurate positioning accuracy controlled by the program on the NC machine tool can realize tool guiding function clamping system. Therefore, the clamping system?in NC machining generally does not need the function of orientation and toolset. It only needs the function of positioning and clamping to meet the requirements of use, which can simplify the structure of the clamping system.

3. In order to adapt to the high efficiency of NC machining, the automatic clamping devices such as pneumatic, hydraulic and shoulder milling cutters electric clamping devices should be used as fast as possible to shorten the auxiliary time.

4. The clamping system?itself should have enough rigidity to adapt to large cutting parameters. NC machining has the characteristics of a centralized process. In one clamp of a workpiece, not only rough machining with great cutting force but also finish machining to meet the requirements of the final accuracy of the workpiece, so the rigidity and clamping force of the clamp must meet the requirements of large cutting force.

5. In order to adapt to NC multi-faceted processing, it is necessary to avoid the interference of the clamping system?structure, including the components on the clamping system, on the tool trajectory. The clamping system?structure should not hinder the multi-faceted processing of various parts of the workpiece surface milling cutters by the tool.

6.clamping system?positioning should be reliable, positioning elements should have high positioning accuracy, positioning position should be easy to clear debris, no chip retention. If the positioning surface of the workpiece is too small, additional process convex or auxiliary datum can be considered.

7. For the workpiece with small stiffness, the minimum clamping deformation should be guaranteed, such as making the clamping point close to the supporting point, avoiding the clamping force acting on the hollow area of the workpiece, etc. When roughing and finishing are completed in the same process, if the above measures can not control the deformation of the workpiece within the range required by the processing accuracy, the program should be suspended before finishing, so that the operator can change the clamping force (appropriately reduced) before finishing after roughing, so as to reduce the impact of clamping deformation on the processing accuracy.